


Hope Comes in Many Forms

by CavannaRose



Series: Mass Effect Stories [4]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Massive Tech Death Ending, Rebuilding, Tuchanka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 03:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13332273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CavannaRose/pseuds/CavannaRose
Summary: Shepard died for the Universe. A year she had been gone, but life finds a way to move on.





	Hope Comes in Many Forms

It had been a year since Shepard had made the grand sacrifice and the Relays went dark. A year of struggling against the massive tech death that had followed. On Tuchanka, the sun rose and set over a barely changed landscape. It had always been barren, they had always survived. The Krogan were a hearty people, they did not need the fancy guns and technology to conquer their domain. They returned with surprising ease to traditional living, and though they lost more young warriors to Thresher Maws than when they had such tools, they continued.

Urdnot Grunt sat up straight, wide awake and eyes bright as a querulous wail broke the silence of the early morning. Despite all the death and destruction... life.

Leaving his Hut he raced across the village square, jostling for position amidst the rest of the curious onlookers. Finally a tired looking Krogan female, veils pushed aside so she could better admire the bundle in her arms, emerged. She held the perfect bundle in the air, for all to see, and the gathered warriors cheered. Each birth was still so precious to them, even the rare single birth like this, after the hopelessness of the genophage, so they came together, raised voices urging the new life to flourish and grow strong.

Behind the midwife, the exhausted looking mother made her way to the door, taking her precious bundle into shaking arms. Bright yellow eyes sought out the strange blue ones that set him so far apart from most of his people. Here, in Clan Urdnot, they forgave him for the circumstances of his birth. He was of the Clan, and that was all that mattered, but some of the outside Clans... It mattered little that the Chief was trying to unite them. War was on the horizon for the Krogans of Tuchanka, he was only one of many reasons why tensions were so high around the negotiation table.

Grunt pushed through the crowd, wrapping an arm around the new mother as he helped her from the birthing hut, the bundle of new potential held close between them both. He looked at them both with a fondness he never felt he would be permitted to feel, back when he was cooking in his nightmarish tank. His freedom, his life, this chance he had, they all were thanks to a human, and he would not forget that, as the galaxy re-organized itself around them. He pulled back the entrance flap to the hut, revealing all he had done in the female's absence.

New leather cushions were strewn around the sleeping area, soft woven rugs covered the hard floor, and his collection of knives and swords were on display, far up the wall and out of the reach of small hands. What drew the female's eye, though, was the small wooden pen near their sleeping platform, cleaned and treated varren pelts lining the walls and floor. She smiled, grasping the plates at the back of Grunt's neck and bringing her forehead to touch his oh so gently. She rumbled a sound of satisfaction. "It is perfect. Our little one can grow here, safe and loved. You have done well."

He grumbled his own satisfaction, accepting the precious infant from his female as she slowly lumbered to the sleeping platform, settling against the new cushions with an exhausted exhalation of breath. Grunt was enraptured by the tiny creature in his arms. He investigated each little claw, each tiny toe. He snuffled against it's belly, and it produced a beguiling burble of happiness. He touched his forehead to that of the child, and then rasped it's soft cheek with his tongue. The baby Krogan opened it's eyes to reveal that same strange blue colour that his own held, and he made a guttural sound of pleasure, one that he'd once heard being teasingly referred to as a purr.

"What new life have you brought to my home, female, and what name have you given it?" He made the traditional inquiry, voice stilted as he stumbled through the formality, It was not as he would prefer to do things, or even to ask, but tradition kept Tuchanka strong, and he was strong. He would never be the weak link in the chains that bound them all together, with his background he could not afford it. He knew that the older Krogans thought on a time when they did not name the new lives, and he would not dishonour them by varying from the script they had been so grateful to revive. His mate looked up, yellow eyes alight with good humour and secrets about to be shared.

"I have brought a female to the ranks of Clan Urdnot, to share wisdom and temper the violence of our males. I have called her," his female paused, her brow ridges gentling with affection as she watched him with their newborn child, "Shepard, for the mighty warrior that saved my mate and brought him to me. I named her Shepard so that she would make family wherever she found herself, and so that she would be strong and fierce in their defense. I named her Shepard because it is a name my mate learned to love, and lost. I named her Shepard, because she will know sacrifice, and she will face it unflinching."

Ever so carefully he placed the new child into her pen, running a tender claw across her barely formed nose-plates before turning to his mate. Six days she had been in the birthing hut, preparing to bring this miracle into their lives, and still she had sacrificed for him. The Krogans had two hearts, and it was said they gave the first to their sky love, the one that they would admire for their entire life, but never touch, and one to their earth love, the one that would be their mate. For his sky love to be alien, it was another sign of the differences, a hint that the tank-bred was not a true Krogan, or at least that was the rumblings in the other Clans. Not Clan Urdnot, though. Clan Urdnot knew the ferocity that existed in the human named Shepard, and though the bundle sleeping was Grunt's first offspring, she was not the first Urdnot named Shepard that had been born on the plains of Tuchanka.

He moved to the sleeping platform, stretching out beside his mate and running his claws along her plates, relearning her changed body. It was smaller, now that she had birthed their young, and he grumbled and growled his concerns against the stretched, leather skin of her abdomen. She rumbled a laugh, placing a claw on Grunt's head. "Worry not, mate of mine, for you a fearsome hunter and soon I will be fat with the fruit of your kills once more, now that our offspring is not stealing it all from inside me."

Tuchanka had been through much, and there would be much more to come. For tonight, the strange, barren planet was a place of life, of hope, and of fond memory.


End file.
